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Here’s a nice little writeup on my Primaluxe basses and plug and play electronics from a couple of members over at ebassist.com:

Kindness: SmallEQ and I spent part of the afternoon today playing around with BeeTL's plug and play harnesses on our basses. SmallEQ's bass is the fiesta red, mine is the sea foam green. We both started the day with the Lollar Thunderbird option:

In addition to the two Lollar Thunderbird pickups, we had (clockwise starting in the upper left) a TV Jones Thunder'Blade, a Fralin Hum Canceling P90, and two Guild BS-1 pickups (only one shown):

You can see from the back of the pickguards that the only thing you need to do to swap in a new set is plug in the ground wire, everything else is wired up and ready to go:

We were both big fans of the Guild BS-1.

SmallEQ is sticking with the BS-1 (BiSonic/Darkstar) shown above, but I decided on the TV Jones Thunder'Blade:

Kindness: The swaps are dead simple and it is really a unique experience to be able to play different pickups in the same bass with the same setup back to back within minutes of each other. And it's even better when you can audition them side by side in such similar basses. It made it really easy to pick exactly the pickup option I wanted and see how similar and dissimilar the options were.

I am someone that typically tweaks whatever setup is in front of me to a mostly consistent sound. I basically try to take anything you put in front of me and do my best to make it sound like Bob Nyswonger recording a P bass. That's too complimentary of my playing and tone, but it's the sound in my head. That's "bass" to me.

I started with the Lollar. It was my least favorite. More "Bartolini" and less "Aero." Smooth, rounded notes. To me, its muffled. To others, it's thick and juicy.

The other three set of pickups are more alike than dissimilar. In a progression away from the Lollar sound I would go Guild BS-1, TV Jones Thunder'Blade, and Fralin Hum Cancelling P90. In isolation, I prefer the Fralin. But it is close enough to the others that I would be more than happy with the Guild or TV Jones. In fact, factoring in that I already have a Dark Star bass (Lakland Hollowbody), and Fralin P bass (my Lakland Glaub), and because the pickup looks rad as mudflap, I am sticking with the TV Jones.

One of the things I love about the Guild BS-1 (and my Dark Stars) is the ability to adjust each pole piece. They are sensitive and, at the right height, are fantastic. The TV Jones pickup is also sensitive to height adjustments. At first, it was a bit thin, but bringing it up to about 3/16" below the E string was a noticeable improvement.

I'm really impressed by the execution of the plug and play concept. Now that I'm done plugging, I'm ready to get playing.

SmallEQ: While I'm not trying to make each bass sound like a Pbass, I do tend to make every bass sound the same and when I can't I generally don't keep it for very long. The Lollar Thunderbird pickup fell into this category for me.

When we were swapping the bisonic and the TV jones we started off by looking up what the recommended string distance was and that made it easy enough to dial it in. I think ultimately I preferred the TV Jones pickup a bit more, but I've always wanted a DS bass and the sound was close enough that I decided to go with the DS.

I wanted to take a moment to thank everybody who has followed Lowe Custom Guitars for your support throughout the years, and over the last few months in particular.

Between the loss of my mother, my daughter Natalie’s high school graduation and enrollment at University of Central Florida, and my own graduation from Eckerd College, it has been an eventful summer.

I am grateful to be surrounded by supportive friends and family, mindful that I have been gifted with a life experience beyond anything I could have reasonably expected, and hopeful that I can somehow reciprocate and share that experience with others as I continue along my path.